HALLOWEEN 2024 PHOTO BLOG: There’s a Third Time For Everything!

If it wasn’t already fairly obvious, Halloween is a big deal here at the Dorkside. But even as someone who sure gets excited for this particular holiday, this year was perhaps the most excited I’ve ever been. Our daughter Alice turned 2 back in September, which means that she was 2 months old for her first Halloween and just over a year old for her second. This October 31st would be the first time where she could actively participate in the festivities, take in all of the costumes, walk up to doors for trick or treating, y’know really experience the whole thing. Our evening turned out to be a truly memorable one, transporting my wife and I back to as close to our own childhoods as we could possibly get.

Let’s take a look!

We figured this would probably be the last Halloween before she begins to dictate what her costume should be so we went with good ol’ Oscar the Grouch. What was supposed to be a wearable trash can wound up doubling as her candy sack and my Wife and I decided to dress up as matching garbage men waste operatives (in my mind we were also secretly channeling Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez from the stone cold classic Met at Work).

Just around the corner from where we live here in North Berkeley, there’s about a 4 block stretch that really goes all out every year. They even block off the streets so that families/kids can really cut loose, running wildly from elaborately decorated house to elaborately decorated house. It totally feels like you’re walking around in some kind of Amblin movie from the 80’s with fallen leaf covered sidewalks and the Sun casting a perfect golden light as it sets and the streetlights begin to pop on.

We kept the trip fairly short this year, leaving the house around 5 along with the other smallest ones. Strolling for around an hour turned out to the perfect amount of time to trick or treat before the teenagers and adults began to hit the scene and the party really got started.

After hitting one last very decked out house, it was time to go back home and begin passing out candy ourselves. Spooky sugar cookies had been made earlier in the day and we had pizza along with a mini-marathon consisting of Garfield’s Halloween Special, It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and Tales From the Darkside Season 2: Episode 5 (“Halloween Candy”).

Oh, and It all wrapped up of course with my annual tradition of closing out the Halloween Season by way of Disney’s animated The Legend of Sleepy Hollow from 1949.

Overall, I’d say this Grump who can’t jump had a blast. Only 358 days until the next one!